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.

The Kimeras had explored the first few rooms of the sewer a day ago. They thought about trying to swim across the flooded chamber, but decided to try their luck in the room full of liquid limestone. They crawled past the deadly pools and came to a flooded chamber of stagnant water. They swam through without issue and crawled through another room filled with acid ponds. They climbed a maintenance access ladder down past a waterfall and came to a room filled with pale weeds and pools of water. A trio of giant leeches attacked them, and were repelled after attaching themselves to Cobb and Devin. 

The air in the next room shimmered, and a written warning on the wall instructed visitors that no open flames were allowed. A set of duckboards on the floor had footprints running to the North and South. The next room had claw marks, burn marks, and bullet holes all over the walls and floor. The one after that was filled with pillars of trash, with the path cut through the middle. The group was wary of trash golems, but none attacked. They searched the piles for treasure and found a couple trinkets of value, but were scared into hiding by the sound of monstrous hoofbeats and gibbering approaching the chamber.

A Nightmare and a single Black Goat staggered into the room. The Kimeras' lights flashlights were off, but the beast's eyes glowed in the complete darkness of the chamber. Improbably, disastrously, the monsters detected the Kimeras hiding in the garbage. They attacked.

The Nightmare cut a swathe through the group with its trampling attack. It glared right at Tristan, infecting him with a little of its roiling madness and damaging his Wisdom. The black goat danced a merry jig, gurgled something in the dark speech, and cast a spell on Cobb, whose skin blistered horribly with thousands of tiny worms

(The spell is referred to in the book as Parasitic Infestation everywhere EXCEPT the spell description itself, which calls it Parasitic INFECTION. This is a serious problem when ctrl-Fing through the rulebook, and one that comes up often)

The Kimeras' counterattack was swift and decisive. A couple good strikes from Tristan's magic axe (formerly Kaldron's) and Devin's magic hammer scared off the Nightmare. The black goat failed its subsequent attempts to cast nasty spells, and was hacked to pieces. Cobb and Zeke tended to the injured Kimeras, and Cobb scooped up samples of the black goat's tissue, fascinated by the stem cells that had caused its hideous and uncontrollable mutations.

The group passed through a chamber that blazed with light from hundreds of bulbs in the walls, floor and ceiling, all hooked up to the city power grid. The room after that was the lair of a cave bear, but the creature was nowhere to be found. The gang counted their blessings and entered the buried ruins, leaving the sewer behind.

The ruins were filled with insects, rat swarms, sagging ceilings and meager rewards. The group traversed them without incident, collecting a few dollars here and there and receiving minor injuries from aggressive vermin. At the West side of the complex, they found another foot path leading out into another section of the underworld. This one had modern electric lighting. The next section of the dungeon had modern locked doors, like the kind you'd find in a hospital. The gang realized they'd gone too far. They needed to place the sensor in the ruins. They turned around to look for a suitable location.