In attendance:
- Johan Cilliers, Impulsive Antiquities Dealer & Interdimensional Parasite Host (Mystic, Level 5)
- Zeke Whitaker Cunctator (Occultist, Level 5)
- Devin “The Punk Bard” Skull, previously of LudiCURSED (Mystic, Level 5)
- Cobb "Jury-rigged immortality is still immortality" Taylor (Doctor, Level 5)
- Tristan Vedhart, Babyfaced "Artist" & Fast Talking Runner (Explorer, Level 4)
The players debated their choices over the days leading up to the session. Consensus was to help the Red Caps. If that meant taking on the MIBs, so be it. The Feds were probably planning on killing them anyway if they did their bidding.
They agreed that they'd take the Union job first, though. If they had the time. They took the van down to the docks, which were closed due due to the rough weather. A single raincoated stevedore sat by the gate, tending a charcoal grill under an awning by the container that served as the front office. He went inside and got Hooks, the Kimeras' contact with the Union. Hooks explained the stakes:
The Feds were closing in, and it was only a matter of time before they went to the Necropolis looking for evidence of an old hit. The Kimeras needed to remove a body from one of the tombs. The crypt with the sea monster crest over the door. The body in the sarcophagus with a specific piece of graffiti on it. The timeline: urgent. The pay: 4,000 dollars.
Then the Kimeras drove to the Blood For Sex. The barkeep on the surface club was just a regular dude, not a Red Cap. The gang lost half the "first generation" during the cave in, forcing their more humanoid descendants to step up and fill the gaps in the operation.
In the underground club, the Red Cap progenitors laid their cards on the table. They had lost a lot of their children in the fighting, and they wanted the Kimeras to marry into the family. The Red Caps were a bloodline, which required replenishing with skilled murderers. They'd be honored to have the Kimeras as sons-in-law (all the characters in this session were male).
The Kimeras liked the sound of that. They were ready to arranged-marry murder fairies and sire more murder fairies. But, there was a problem. They showed their future grandmother and grandfather and law the note they'd got from the MIBs. "Get rid of the Red Caps and you're free." The Red Cap progenitors said they'd take care of it. A wedding present, from their family to the Kimeras. The Kimeras warned them that the MIBs were tough, and offered their help with the fight. The Red Caps demurred. It was a gift, not a job for them to help with. The Kimeras tried to press the issue, but the Red Caps insisted. They'd handle it.
They did some preliminary planning for the engagement, set up a time to actually meet their brides-to-be, and sealed the pact with a long dagger driven through all their palms, pinning them to the table simultaneously.
The Kimeras were still worried. The second they were out of the Blood For Sex, they called up Liza the Sharp Objects, the kid who brought them the wyrmling wings last week. They offered her 1,500 dollars to assemble a gang and stake out the known MIB safehouses in the city. She was to call them if anything went down.
Then they went out for brunch, at the Eggs on the East Side waterfront. They only noticed as the guy at the next table was leaving that he had fishy barbells dangling from his lips. The Leviathan cult? They paid their check and left. They had time to take care of the Union job after all.
(All the faction encounters in this session took the place of random encounters rolled on the wandering monster die. They had run up some debts in the underworld, and the storm was the perfect time to cash it in)
The storm got worse. The rain came down like the meaty fist of a giant, inebriated stepfather. The van hydroplaned as Tristan drove up the coast road to the little bridge. He avoided going into the water by turning into a street sign, crashing the van.
The Kimeras got out to assess the damage. A group of yellow-coated figures approached out of the rain, surrounding them on all sides. One stepped forward and pulled back her rubber hood. Her skull was missing, her brain held inside a fleshy mantle like an octopus. She said the Kimeras should come with her, or she'd take them with her. Johan stepped up and cast Suggestion, informing her that she did NOT need to take the Kimeras with her, and she should leave. She took the rest of the kidnappers back into the maelstrom. The Kimeras fixed the van and took it to the Necropolis.
The rain was pooling where the earth was too saturated to hold more water, running down the narrow pathways between the headstones and into the open mouths of the tombs. The mausoleum entrance to the underworld probably began its life as a drainage pit, to stop the crypt from flooding in wet weather. There were no Sunflowers guarding the tombs of their ancestors. Just some police caution tape that the Kimeras pushed aside.
The tomb with the sea monster crest was cruciform in its design. It was buried, only the peaked roofs stood above ground. The stairs down to the entrance were unblocked, the stones removed from the entrance with great care (rather than with a sledgehammer). Rainwater bounced down the stairs and gurgled away somewhere inside.
The Kimeras immediately noticed that all the sarcophagi had been removed from their mortuary shelves and dragged further into the crypt. Tristan pulled on his NVGs and scouted ahead. He followed the drag marks and rushing water to the ultimate chamber of the tomb. At the end, the sarcophagi had been heaped into an enormous throne. A death knight sat atop the pile, with a prosthetic leg of gold and a skull stapled together from fragments. At his feet, a trio of mummified saints fawned over him like something out of a Frazetta painting. Four more death knights stood guard at the foot of the pile. Rainwater rushed into a pit at the center of the room, down into the unknown depths below.
Tristan reported back to the Kimeras. Zeke shouted "This is for Kaldron!" and threw a fireball into the room, incinerating three death knights, scorching two, and searing the mummified saints.
(Fireballs have a defined radius, but the spell description says when cast in an underground space the blast can expand to fill the whole room. Like explosives in Delta Green)
The other Kimeras targeted the saints, potent support casters that would otherwise lengthen their battle with the death knights. Johan pulled on the magic bear skin he recovered from the Ursus reliquary and became a cave bear, attacking with tooth and claw.
The death knight with the golden leg leaped down from the throne of coffins. "No, THIS is for Kaldron" he shouted, in a voice the Kimeras recognized, and struck at Zeke with his longsword. The other Death Knight attacked Devin.
The other Kimeras finished off the saints, but discovered they couldn't damage the death knights while they were locked in their respective duels. But that didn't stop bear-Johan from grappling death-Kaldron, immobilizing him beneath a ton of fur and gristle.
(Cave bears automatically pin the target if both their claw attacks hit)
The bear held Kaldron down while Zeke slapped him around. Kaldron broke free and fled up the pile of sarcophagi, to keep the bear from following him. The bear tried to climb after him, but the coffins kept tumbling down under his weight. Zeke pulled his gun and shot at Kaldron, who fled down the other side of the pile to block line of sight. Devin got sick of the other death knight poking him with the longsword and cast Levitate on him. The knight went floating up to the ceiling, out of reach of Devin, cursing at him all the way.
Zeke shot at Kaldron and missed. Kaldron threw his sword and missed. Kaldron offered to end this farce restart the duel with someone else who was better at hand to hand combat. Tristan agreed to face him instead.
The pair squared off. Kaldron joked that he was going to take his leg back from Tristan. He didn't mean it. Tristan put an axe through the gap between his gorget and cuirass at the shoulder, into the torso. The lifeless skeleton collapsed inside its suit of plates.
The Kimeras searched the pile for the right sarcophagus and dragged the armored, gold plated skeletons out onto the lawn of the tomb. Devin dropped the levitating final death knight into the drainage pit, where he disappeared from view.
The Kimeras dragged their objective and the armored skeletons to their van. Two police cars pulled up to challenge them. Drawn by reports of shooting inside the tomb, the officers assumed the Sunflowers had got in another gunfight. The officers yelled at the Kimeras to drop their weapons and step away from the van. Johan used a Command to immobilize one officer for a round as the Kimeras drove away. The cops got in their cars and followed, leaving the stunned patrolman behind.
Tristan couldn't shake the patrol cars, but they couldn't close the distance. They sped down the hill, headed for the little bridge. A third black-and-white came up the hill toward them. Zeke cast bleeding curse on the driver and he broke off pursuit before he could pull a U turn and join the chase. As they hit the bridge, Johan pulled the corpse out of the sarcophagus and pushed the heavy stone box out the back of the van. One of the cars avoided it, the other crashed and was disabled. Devin cast levitate on the other car, removing its tires from the road and its ability to steer or accelerate. It glided forward under momentum, an airborne projectile at 55 miles per hour. The Kimeras turned off onto the interchange. The cop car went sailing forward on its original course and through the first floor window of City Hall.
The Kimeras pulled off the King's Road and into the old warehouse district. They needed to get off the streets, fast. They pulled the corpses out of the van, and Tristan drove off to hide the car while the rest of the gang hauled them into the warehouse entrance to the underworld.
The Troll from the Fairy Enclave was inside, babysitting a trio of sprites. He was surprised to run into the Kimeras again, but not surprised that they were hauling a load of corpses. The curious sprites flew around the Kimeras, asking every question they could think of about the mysterious corpses. The Kimeras said they weren't there to hurt anyone. The trolls asked them if they had ever, even once, said that and meant it. He left with the sprites. Tristan arrived and they hauled the bodies down into the undercity.
(The warehouse entrance is a wild place that automatically provokes a random encounter. The table spit out a troll and a handful of sprites, and the players had already encountered this troll several times)
In the chamber below the warehouse, the Kimeras poured bottles of liquid limestone all over the corpse the Union needed disposed of. Then they smashed it to dust. Mission accomplished. Time to head back to the Blood For Sex, conveniently connected by an adjoining tunnel.
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