Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow Town - Prep For Session Two

JOBS

Doctor Klay suggested that the Art Gallery and the Megachurch both had the power to get Acrasia's arm back, in exchange for a favor.

The Grange: Friend of ours over on the South Side refuses to pay for a herd of beefs one of our members delivered. Make him see reason, would you? He owes us fifty large, we'll give you a ten percent cut of that for your trouble.

The Explorers: The thousand dollars is still on the table if you find us an underground route to the Sink.

Esoteric Enterprises - Prep For Session Ten

NEWS

Following the arrest of several high profile members of the Ponda Ray family, Federal Law Enforcement continues its campaign against organized crime in Coal City. The Chief Inspector attached to the case stated that the primary focus of the operation has shifted to ensuring that the power vacuum left by the Ponda Rays' absence is not immediately refilled.

Coal City Public Works continue to investigate the spontaneous collapse of the old church on the West Side. City Officials cite a decades long trend of national disinvestment in public infrastructure as responsible for the cave-in, along with other high profile structural failures in the city's built environment over the last few months.

Meteorologists have issued a severe weather alert for a near-ruinstorm approaching the city, expected to make landfall in the coming days. Citizens are advised to prepare for a potential shelter-in-place order, or in worst case scenarios, an evacuation.

This broadcast was paid for by a generous contribution from the Free Folk Charitable Trust. Ensuring a safe place for every child.

JOBS

Red Caps: Stop by the club tonight. We want to talk about you joining the family.

Men In Black: Get rid of the Red Caps and you're free.

Ponda Rays: Ok, we recognize the disposal job is a little hotter than we anticipated. 4,000 dollars to move a body out of the Necropolis before the Feds find it.

SURVIVING PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIKE YOU

The Sunflowers (Militia that guards the Necropolis)
The Morlocks (Cave dwelling mystics)
The Leviathan Cult (Sewer dwelling squid worshippers)

Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow Town - Session One, Part Two

(Continued from part one)

The pudgy, elderly, bespectacled, luxuriantly dressed Doctor Klay swung down through the window well on his cane, using his powerful arms to supplement his stubby legs.

He rasped out a greeting, and asked the gang to show him the "patient". Larry helped the Doctor haul the dead vampire to one of the old dressing rooms, where they tossed it on a table for dissection. The Doctor treated Larry and Acrasia for the wounds they'd received fighting the vampires, then went to work chopping up the specimen.

Carl had been gone about forty five minutes. Acrasia and Larry went back through the passwall into the dungeon, to see if he was still alive, and if he had accomplished his mission.

Esoteric Enterprises - No Town Like Cow Town - Session One, Part One

Cow Town, the "overflow" game of Esoteric Enterprises, was populated with the usual suspects from the regular game. I didn't get the cavalcade of new players I expected, but I did get one person who played some of the early Coal City games but dropped out.

I really enjoyed this session. There were a few moments where things dragged, because the procedural dungeon generator kept spitting out results the players had already seen in Coal City. But I feel good about running more sessions in Cow Town. I'm going to use it as a testbed for the crime and gang building mechanics I've been working on.

In attendance were a trio of Level 1 characters, created by a trio of regular players.

• Acrasia, Dream of Hunger (Spook Lvl 1)
• Larry Lippman, One-half of a man on the run. (Explorer Lvl 1)
• Elsa Vísendakona, Gun Toting Goth Chick & Idol to Children Everywhere (Occultist Lvl 1)

The gang met at the Silo, a bar in downtown Cow Town.

Larry was fresh off the train from Coal City, which he needed to get away from. Acrasia was a fairy, dreamed into existence fully formed only a day or two ago. Elsa had a car, and knew about a job: the explorers out in the Love Shack in the East Side were offering payment for some underworld explanation.

The Love Shack was an old brothel on the edge of town. It had been closed for years, ever since they put the K-12 school in down the road. Now it was home to a bunch of Underworld Explorers, who never seemed to be there when the cops arrived.

Elsa drove past the only accredited religious institution in town, the Megachurch, where live snakes were released into the pews every Sunday. Past the failing K-12 school, popularly known as the meat grinder by alumni.

The Love Shack was camouflaged to look abandoned, overgrown and boarded up. The group hid their car in a copse of trees and looked for a way in. There were no obvious points of ingress, but eventually a teenage kid hidden in the window well took pity on them and showed them how to get into the basement.

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Nine

Session Nine continued the shift from dungeon exploration to gang violence we'd seen over the last couple sessions.

In attendance:

• Johan Cilliers, Impulsive Antiquities Dealer & Interdimensional Parasite Host (Mystic, Level 4)
• Zeke Whitaker Cunctator (Occultist, Level 4)
• Devin “The Punk Bard” Skull, previously of LudiCURSED (Mystic, Level 4)
• Cobb "Jury-rigged immortality is still immortality" Taylor (Doctor, Level 4)
• Eileen Walter, Human shield for hire (Bodyguard, Level 3)

The Kimeras began at Cobb's house in the suburbs, where he used super-science to attach more monster parts to people. He gave himself a "backup nervous system" by grafting stem cells from the ferret hydra's spine-in-brine to his own. He also attached some leftover squid tentacles to Devin's head, to make a cosmetic but still totally bitchin' tentacle mohawk.

With all the money they had from their illegal activities and "legitimate" income, the Kimeras decided to splurge a little on stuff they always wanted. They picked up a sweet van for Devin to airbrush a wizard on. Devin also wanted Cobb to give him wings, so the gang put out a "bounty" on the street - a thousand dollars for anyone who brought them an intact pair of wings from an underworld creature.

(Like I mentioned in my last post, the game doesn't have mechanical support for the players doing their own gang stuff. Going from bounty collectors to bounty offerers was a way to make them feel like they were moving up in the criminal underworld)

With the housekeeping taken care of, the Kimeras voted to help the Red Caps eliminate the Buddhas and Ursus cult for good. The trip to the Blood For Sex was quick and uneventful in their newly purchased van. The heads of the Red Cap family were in the underground club, going over a map of the dungeon with their children. They invited the Kimeras to pull up a chair.

Esoteric Enterprises - Advancement, Scope, and "Domain Level" Play

I never thought I'd say it, but I'm actually interested in "Domain Level" play. And the game I want it for doesn't say anything about it. Esoteric Enterprises is a game about being a criminal in the occult underworld. In the current open table game I'm running, the players have clawed their way up through the underground to become serious players in the Coal City nightlife - partially through their fearsome reputation, and partially because they're some of the last wizards standing after months of gang warfare. Kaldron's Kimeras should be thinking about recruiting their own goons, setting up their own hustles. But the game has no rules for creating and running your own criminal gang. You can work for other factions, and you can fight other factions, but you can't be a faction.

This is unfortunate because the dungeon crawling loop (get mission, go under, fight things, grab money, map a new area, run away from things, limp back to the surface) is feeling a little stale. Shooting people in gang wars is feeling stale. The players keep showing up, but I'm running out of ways to mix things up. The gangs of Coal City are running out of bodies, and the dungeon is running out of unexplored rooms.

(Indie Game Reading Club had a post that mentioned this, which I can't find now. About how even games with really good procedural content generators will eventually run dry if there isn't something else to do besides burn through the randomly generated maps and encounters)

When I brought this up on the server, one of the players speculated that the PCs were never actually intended to be as powerful or relevant as Kaldron's Kimeras. I applied a 5X multiplier to experience, and most of the group is between level 2 and 4 after nine sessions. Without the multiplier, most of them would be just about at level 2.

But then, either the players are eventually supposed to achieve those positions, at which point we still come to the problem of running your own criminal enterprise. Or they aren't supposed to reach those heights, and the huge tables of XP advancement, power advancement, saving throw advancement, and nine levels of spells aren't actually intended for use.

I think it's the latter. I think the players are supposed to be magical hobos living on the edge of civilization, diving dungeons and getting into gritty magical underworld gunfights for gas money and child support payments. The best they can hope for is to be useful enough that the real players keep them around, or dangerous enough to not be worth bothering, or have a plan to escape when the powers-that-be finally get tired of them. Maybe someday if they prove their worth, they can join a faction, be granted safety and security and purpose, and move one or two concentric rings inward toward civilization. But being tough enough to start your own? Fuggedaboutit.

Except, if that's the case, why all the levels and spells and so on?

Esoteric Enterprise is cloned from Lamentations, which is cloned from B/X. My guess is the author did this to avoid the agony of developing a bespoke system, and get right to the meat of cranking out the actual content. All the huge XP tables, spell levels, and even the classes are reskinned from Lamentations.

I ran Lamentations for a few sessions in undergrad, way-back-when, and it suffered from the same problem. It still had mechanical support for character advancement, but the actual modules for it were all survival horror. There was little treasure to be had, certainly nothing like the windfall of the B/X treasure tables, and the characters were lucky if they made it out alive. More so if they avoided all the mutilations and mutations the scenarios had in store. It wasn't a game about advancement, it was about degeneration - more like Call of Cthulhu or Delta Green than the games it was cloned from.

A lot of game designers who make OSR stuff are in love with the first-level experience. Characters can't count on a cushion of HP, special powers, decent saving throws or damage output to protect them. Smart use of limited resources is essential to survival. The players are always paying attention because, like the man said, death waits for the slightest lapse in concentration.

Instead of cloning B/X, I encourage these designers to create their own game systems that take the things they like about first level play and stretch them out to cover the entire game. Instead of porting over thirty year old rules for XP advancement that clearly no longer reflect what their game is about.

Esoteric Enterprises: There's No Town Like Cow Town

This is Cow Town.

It's about 90 km out from Coal City by the King's Road. If Coal City was the furnace that once lit up the country, Cow Town is the "beef basket" that feeds it.

The police station is the second biggest building in town, after the United Meat Train branch office, and they both get their paychecks from the same place. There's an open pit on the South side which a twenty year legal fight still hasn't closed, where the processing plants dump the offal they don't use. The only church in town releases live snakes into the pews on Sundays. The single K-12 school burns through a third of its budget every year fending off lawsuits. The most common cause of death in Cow Town is heart disease, followed by colon cancer. The whole place reeks of cowshit, methane, and meat in various stages of rendering.

And there's a whole world under the town, even worse than the surface.

(I'm running a second Esoteric Enterprises game in tandem with the first. Instead of first come first serve, this one will be stocked by taking an unlimited number of signups, then eliminating the people with the most games played until I'm left with five)

Esoteric Enterprises - Prep For Session Nine

RUMORS

Buddhas are out. Went over to the Bears. Strong morals, right?

Speedfreaks hit the enclave, bailed out the queen and her brats. They're holed up somewhere in town now. Who knows?

It's war season for Squid and Bear. They're going to hurt someone.

Northern Monkeys took up residence in the caves where the rocks used to hang. Wonder if they're planning a move on the Ponda Rays.

Feds are talking about indicting the earrings. Problem with being the last man standing: you're easy to pick out of a crowd.

MIBs hit the library in the old mine, tried to take them out of circulation. They let something out.

WORK

Ponda Ray Family: Ezzy's offer for dead squids is still on the table. 500 a head, if you bring receipts.

Ponda Ray Family: Lenny wants a body dug up and moved out of the Necropolis before the Feds find it. The job pays 2,000.

Smugglers: One of our contacts is looking for some tech from the old Serpent Man ruins to the Northwest. Would part with 2,000 dollars for it.

Red Caps: Buddhas are with the Bears now? Makes no difference. Let's end this, together. 1,000 dollars each for anyone who rolls with us when we knock over Ursus HQ.

PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIKE YOU

The Library (Occultists guarding a hoard of magic tomes)
The Ursus Cult (Bear worshipping gym rats)
The Fairy Enclave (A court of magical creatures)
The Sunflowers (Militia that guards the Necropolis)
The Morlocks (Cave dwelling mystics)
The Leviathan Cult (Sewer dwelling squid worshippers)

Delta Green NPC: Jephthath "Gyp" Marsh

Jephthath "Gyp" Marsh

A former kapo from P Division's deep one concentration camp

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Eight, Part Two

(Continued from part one)

The Kimeras were joined by a fifth musketeer before they descended into the underworld again.

• Tristan Vedhart, Babyfaced "Artist" & Fast Talking Runner (Explorer, Level 3)

Tristan drank too much and slept through all the messages. Then it took him an hour to get to the Vinculum from Cobb's house on the West Side. This gave the rest of the Kimeras time to recover from their injuries.

(Esoteric Enterprises lets Occultists cast spells without spending slots if they take a 10 minute dungeon turn to do so, meaning they can heal Flesh for free if they've got Cure Wounds. Sort of like ritual casting in 5e)

United, the five dungeoneers descended into the underworld again using the Vinculum stairs. Their target: the Lithic Courts and the Limestone Caves they'd visited the previous week. With the rock people and mercenaries gone, there could be all kinds of treasure and equipment left behind to salvage.

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Eight, Part One

Session Eight was a delight. It was the first one in weeks that started with an empty seat, but we picked up another player halfway through. I've consistently had a full table and I'm thinking about increasing to two weekly games to serve all the demand.

In attendance:

• Johan Cilliers, Impulsive Antiquities Dealer & Interdimensional Parasite Host (Mystic, Level 4)
• Zeke Whitaker Cunctator (Occultist, Level 3)
• Devin Skull “The Punk Bard” previously of LudiCURSED (Mystic, Level 3)
• Eileen Walter, Human shield for hire (Bodyguard, Level 2)

(The players realized that their characters were supposed to have Resource Levels equal to their character level. They could be forgiven for missing this because it's not mentioned in the character creation section, or the section on character advancement, but instead is mentioned in passing in the section on cash and downtime)

The gang debated which of the jobs and rumors they wanted to pursue. They thought about taking the Union up on dealing with the Smugglers, but decided they didn't want to make any more enemies. The Fat Buddhas were already annoyed with them, meaning that they wouldn't be taking on any NEW beefs by shooting them up, so they decided on the Red Cap job.

(J E Sawyer did a cool talk recently about reputation systems in games, where he explained how they can guide player choice by opening up new options as the player builds relationships with the game's factions. The flip side is that reputation can also close off options, if the players feel that they've "locked in" supporting one faction. One cool thing New Vegas did to mitigate this was the addition of the mixed reputation statuses (Wild Child, Soft Hearted Devil, etc) that gave explicit reinforcement to players who didn't always want to side with the same NPCs over and over again. Maybe there's a lesson there for me)

Devin wanted to make the liquid limestone he'd bottled in a previous adventure into a gas grenade. Inhaling the stuff would be like forming hundreds of tiny tumors in the victim's throat and lungs. Working together with Zeke, he prepared two improvised gas grenades that used the stuff. By now the entire team had picked up gas masks.

The barkeep at the Blood For Sex told the gang that the Fat Buddhas had a hideout in the underground. West of the Sewer Cluster next to the Blood For Sex entrance, South of the limestone cave system next to the Vinculum entrance. The Buddhas were already at war with the Red Caps and were expecting an attack from the East. Their Northern flank would be less well protected.

The target: question marks west of Blood For Sex, South of Vinculum

The group decided to enter at Vinculum, and travel South through the limestone caves, to strike at the Buddhas' (hopefully) unprotected flank.

Esoteric Enterprises - Prep For Session Eight

RUMORS

Rocks are gone. Just up and left. Like they'd finished whatever they were here for. Took out most of the Fat Suns in the cave before they went. Whole lotta hardware left behind...

City wants the mausoleum filled with concrete, so the Sunflowers will stop starting shootouts over it. But the crews won't go in. They say something's picking 'em off. Flowers aren't doing it, they all went home. It's something else...

Squids and Bears made nice. Still don't like each other, but they like the Earrings gobbling up the whole city a lot less...

Seelie King's dead. Regicide. The Courtiers didn't like the way things were headed. Queen's holed up with the surviving loyalists. Promised "all the wealth of Feyland" to anyone who rescues her and her children.

WORK

The Red Caps: Let's say someone were to knock over the Fat Buddha's underground hideout on the East Side, that would be worth a cool 2,000 dollars.

Smugglers: One of our contacts is looking for some tech from the old Serpent Man ruins to the Northwest. Would part with 2,000 dollars for it.

The Union: Hooks the Stevedore explains the Smugglers were supposed to bring a load from the Enclave. Now they're being difficult about it. They're holding it in their hideout under the West side. The Union would pay 2,000 to get it back.

The Ponda Ray Family: Ezzy let slip that the Earrings would pay 500 dollars a head for dead Squids. You people seem like you have no problem killing things. Just bring back a receipt for each one.

PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIKE YOU

The Library (Occultists guarding a hoard of magic tomes)
The Ursus Cult (Bear worshipping gym rats)
The Fairy Enclave (A court of magical creatures)
The Sunflowers (Militia that guards the Necropolis)
The Morlocks (Cave dwelling mystics)
The Leviathan Cult (Sewer dwelling squid worshippers)

Grit vs Flesh - Descriptive Text

Esoteric Enterprises deals with the "HP as not-getting-hit points vs HP as meat points" debate by separating HP into two pools, Grit and Flesh.

Grit is your not-getting-hit points. It's easy to replenish, as long as you have at least one Flesh left, a ten minute rest can get it all back. Damage to grit is near misses, superficial injuries, and being worn down so you don't dodge the next attack.

Flesh is your meat points. It's harder to replenish, requiring medical intervention, magical healing, or days of recuperation. Damage to flesh is genuine physical wounds, though not necessarily the kind that inflicts permanent injuries (those are covered by the horrible wounds table).

Mechanically, I like this a lot. It means that you can shrug off chip damage, at a cost (resting means wandering monster tables) but a certain density of damage is trouble. It means most of the time, you're never more than a rest away from having at least some HP, but taking a lot of damage still hurts. It allows the game to have special attacks that ignore Grit and hit Flesh directly, or attacks that have different consequences when they hit Grit vs Flesh. Most Esoteric Enterprises PCs have low AC values, but Grit presents an alternate way of systematizing the dodging of attacks.

What's harder is coming up with good, convincing descriptions of hits to Grit. Not for the players. They can see their character sheets and they know where the damage is hitting them (first Grit, then Flesh). If I say "you get hit for X damage" then they know whether the shot was a near miss, a glancing blow, a serious wound, etc based on how much HP they lost from which category.

NPCs are harder. If someone shoots a Cult Magister for 8 points of damage, that doesn't get through his Grit to his Flesh. He hasn't taken any serious physical injury from the attack. That's hard to describe in a way that feels impactful, while still communicating that he's got a buffer left. If I say "the handful of buckshot hits the doorframe, spraying his face and hands with wood splinters" then it sounds like the player just missed.The players know he took damage, they saw the die roll. But it feels different.

When I played 5E, Pathfinder, etc, the convention was to have characters appear "bloodied" when they reached half HP or less. Before that, they might be scratched or bruised, but the DM didn't bother describing them as visibly injured. I think there's an obvious analogue here to Grit vs Flesh. It might not be satisfying to describe hits on Grit as a near miss, but making the transition to Flesh as clear as possible is important. The players know when a hit "connects" for the first time that they've chewed through the rind, and are about to get a taste of the juicy center.

May My Right Hand Forget Its Skill - A Samson Option Scenario

May My Right Hand Forget Its Skill

Researchers of the Samson Option, a secret circle of occultists within the Israeli Antiquities Authority, track down evidence of Jewish collaboration with Heinrich Himmler's occult inner circle.

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Seven, Part Two

(Continued from part one)

Ezzy wasn't tending bar at Vinculum. The Kimeras needed to find her to get paid. The Domovoi was still sitting on the counter, helping himself to a pint of "liquid bread". He told them that Ezzy had left with some of the other earings. Headed for the Armed Arms hotel, downtown. The Kimeras realized something big was happening at the hotel. Mara the Mercenary had offered them a job bodyguarding a client there. They decided to throw themselves into the fight on the Ponda Ray side, find Ezzy and get paid.

There were gunshots coming from inside the hotel. Smoke poured out of the windows where something had set the interior on fire. Devin used his electrical sense to scan the building for creatures. He spotted the electrical signature of a lithic creature squirming up the staircase on the third floor, along with a massive gamma ray emitter.

The Kimeras entered the building through the service door, which had been bored open by the passage of a large stone creature. They ascended the stairs and ran into the Ponda Ray goons, who were staying well behind the rock monsters. The mafia greaseballs had plate carriers and kevlar over their polo shirts and bowling slacks. Ezzy came down the stairs to deal with the Kimeras. She had lost the scarf covering her eye. Behind it was a hole, which went through the eye socket and out the back of her head. She pointed out that they had visitors. A group of hooded figures was hurrying up the stairs after the Kimeras, a couple stories down. She tossed a grenade down the stairwell to thin the herd. The survivors rushed them.

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Seven, Part One

As promised, session seven focused more on factional violence than exploring the dungeon, which the players had already mapped a lot of.

The players

• Zeke Whitaker Cunctator (Occultist, Level 3)
• Tristan Vedhart, Babyfaced "Artist" & Fast Talking Runner (Criminal, Level 3)
• Cobb "Doctor Jury-rigged immortality is still immortality" Taylor (Doctor, Level 3)
• Devin Skull “The Punk Bard” previously of LudiCURSED (Mystic, Level 2)
• Eileen Walter, Human shield for hire (Bodyguard, Level 1)

The players debated the jobs on offer, and decided to deliver a message for the Ponda Rays to the Fat Suns in the caverns. It sounded like an opportunity to make friends and score some easy money, without pissing anyone off.

Lieutenant Lenny of the Ponda Ray Family met them at the boardwalk on the West Side. He leaned forward to eat his cannoli so the powdered sugar wouldn't drip on his 200 dollar polo shirt. The group recognized him from the secret crypt, where he'd kicked them out after they upset the don. He gave them a diplomatic pouch and told them to deliver it to the Fat Suns in the limestone caves. Under no circumstances were they to open it, or allow anyone except Inger (or her replacement, if she'd been killed) to open it.

The players decided to phone ahead and warn the Fat Suns that they were delivering a package, so the mercenaries wouldn't accidentally shoot them on the way in. They got ahold of Mara, but he was in a bad place and not interested in what they had to say. He asked them if they were ready to help him protect his client at the hotel and they weren't interested, so he hung up immediately.

Undeterred, the group got a bus to Vinculum. They decided to try going through the Lithic Court Embassy, West of the club's underground entrance. They passed Ezzy the barkeep on the way in, as usual. She was entertaining the domovoi they adopted from the fairy enclave, feeding him a White Russian in lieu of milk.

The statue of Wallace watching over the dungeon entrance had a couple new polaroids of dead dungeoneers stuck to it. One of them was of Kaldron, from the time he descended through the Vinculum entrance. The Kimeras descended the staircase into the underworld.

Rehab - A Delta Green Scenario

Rehab

A single Agent is sent to a private rehab clinic as a patient, for an undercover investigation of a Delta Green Case Officer who's been involuntarily committed and may be leaking dangerous secrets.

Esoteric Enterprises - Prep For Session Seven

WORK

In addition to free exploration and the players picking their own work, the following jobs are on offer for session seven.

The Red Caps: Let's say someone were to knock over the Fat Buddha's underground hideout on the East Side, that would be worth a cool 2,000 dollars.

The Ponda Ray Family: We can't be seen taking a message to the Fat Sun mercenaries in the caves on the West Side. We'd pay a courier 1,500 dollars to deliver it.

The Fat Sun Mercenaries: Our friend is staying at a hotel downtown. We'll pay you 2,000 dollars to play bodyguard for the day. Just please do it, I want this shit to be over and I can't spare anyone with the cops crawling all over like this.

???: An obvious cutout for an unknown faction is offering you 2,000 dollars to map the entrances to the Bear Cult's Reliquary on the West Side.

NEWS

Law Enforcement is still on the lookout for the culprits of the Big Bridge Bombing. Federal police said they had new leads, and expected to make an arrest soon. The Department of Transportation had no updates on if and when they expect the bridge to be rebuilt and reopened.

Public health officials are tracking an outbreak of bubonic plague, originating from somewhere on the city's public transportation system. Coal City Metro officials said they were disinfecting the affected coaches, and reviewing security footage and payment records to ensure that all passengers aboard them at the time of the incident could be notified that they may have been exposed.

Efforts by Coal City Public Works to cordon off an unsafe section of the Hill Necropolis have been blocked by an injunction, until a lawsuit brought by the Friends of Coal City against the city over the closure can be resolved.

This broadcast was generously sponsored by the International Fraternity of Stevedores, Teamsters and Draymen, Local 99. Hope in Work, Joy in Leisure.

PEOPLE WHO DO NOT LIKE YOU

The Library (Occultists guarding a hoard of magic tomes)
The Ursus Cult (Bear worshipping gym rats)
The Fairy Enclave (A court of magical creatures)
The Sunflowers (Militia that guards the Necropolis)
The Morlocks (Cave dwelling mystics)

Blood, Pus and Vinegar - A Spanish Civil War Scenario

Blood, Pus and Vinegar

In the middle of the Spanish Civil War, a scratch force of Nationalists rushes to garrison an isolated mountain convent against an advancing Republican column.

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Six, Part Two

(Continued from part one)

Back to the ruins, to explore North for a good place to put the final MIB device. The ceiling of the next room was almost collapsed, sagging dangerously. A strange mist billowed in from the West. The Kimeras followed it to an abandoned cafeteria, filled with fog. They crossed the room to investigate the other exits, when Zeke spotted it on the ceiling.

A giant barnacle, the size of a van. Just... hovering there. Not the kind they'd seen in the mines, either. They gave it a wide berth as they crossed the room. The mist swirled and formed words floating in the air.

"TURN AROUND AND LEAVE"

The players asked who they were talking to. The letters turned into an arrow and pointed at the barnacle. They asked why it wanted them to leave.

"WE THREE WILL DEFEND OURSELVES"

They continued on their way, ignoring the creature's warnings. It slowly hovered toward them, dangling upside down, and they opened fire. It deflected most of their shots and got in a good whack with its forelimbs before Tristan split it open and killed it with his magic axe.

With the danger apparently gone, Zeke looted the room while Zach looked for a good place to place the device. A child sized amalgamation of vines swung into the room with murderous intent, and Tristan axed it out of the air before it could do any damage. Zach hid the sensor cluster. Zeke kept searching for treasure. The sensor beacon activated, completing the network.

(I rolled a D4 to see how many rounds it would take for the other beasts to arrive. I rolled high, which gave the players a generous margin to focus them down one at a time.)

Then time jumped forward. The Kimeras were sprawled on the ground, bruised and bleeding from multiple pincer wounds. A giant crab bleeding smoke from its carapace was grappling with an enormous, suited man in a ceramic mask. The man smartly deflected the creature's claw, and executed a flawless point shooting drill, putting two rounds into the beast with his pistol held at hip level.

RE: scale, the MIB is maybe 8 feet tall

It wasn't enough to kill the monster, or stop it from casting a spell. With a crackling sound, the masked man fizzled and disappeared. The players were left on their own against the giant crab.

Esoteric Enterprises - Session Six, Part One

Session six took place an in-game day after Session Five, two days after Session Four. The mission: to place the last of three sensor devices given to the group by the Men In Black, to help them track down the three Paradox Beasts loose in the underworld.

In attendance,

• Cobb "jury-rigged immortality is still immortality" Taylor (Doctor, Level 3)
• Zeke Witwer (Occultist, Level 2) 
• Devin Skull “The Punk Bard” previously of LudiCURSED (Mystic, Level 2)
• Tristan Vedhart, Babyfaced "Artist" & Fast Talking Limper (Explorer, Level 2)
• Zachary Brighton, “Cursed” Dissolute Aristocrat (Spook, Level 1)

The players finally decided to name the group, which makes writing these posts easier since I don't have to write "the players" or "the group" anymore. Now they're Kaldron's Kimeras in honor of the first member of the gang to die.

The group planned out the placement of the final sensor at the Auld Tam, a gin palace they knew sold spirits from the fairy enclave. The servers dispensed the brew from the mouths of gargoyles, like the English speakeasies of old. The Kimeras weren't in the mood for strong drink. They had a date with the sewers West of the Blood For Sex.

The final sensor needed to be placed beneath the old harbor island

The walk from the bar to the club was uneventful. The father of the Red Caps was drinking a cocktail and carving something in the table at the VIP booth in the underground section, but the players ignored him.

The little guy making a mess

It was time to place the last sensor.