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

Session eight only had two players. That worked fine, since the areas they visited were relatively low-threat.

In attendance:

• Cassiopeia Unseelie the Third Generation Red Cap (Spook Lvl 3)
• Seaxneat "Sax the Knife" Saint Sebastian (Mercenary Lvl 1)

They began the game at the downtown Burger Head. They watched the police come in and hassle a table full of teenagers, eventually picking one to drag away to an unknown fate. There was something wrong with the police - they were all greasy, and drooling a little. They counted themselves lucky that the police hadn't clocked them as persons of interest, climbed in their van, and drove to Flowers Coffee. They climbed through the painting on the second story, leading to the Occultists' lair.

The Red Barn was guarded by Wayne the Pyromancer, who freaked out and almost incinerated them. Cooler heads prevailed, and they were allowed entrance to the guest rooms again. They found the surviving Explorers, who had abandoned the Love Shack to shack up with the occultists.

The stakes were this: The Occultists had a plan to deal with the Meat God, but they needed the Fire Cult. The Fire Cult was missing, only the Art Collective knew where they were. The Art Collective was also missing. The only clue was a weird painting on sale in the showroom at the Underworld Vault, East of the Cistern. And the underground was even more infested with Vampires than ever before, so they had to be careful.

The players decided to head straight to the Megachurch, to learn more about the Vampires and find some silver weapons. They arrived in the middle of Sunday services, and were greeted by a group of well armed "ushers" who flashed them with an enormous UV light. Satisfied that they weren't undead creatures, the MCs directed them to the back of the balcony, where there was still standing room. They watched Father Bacon give a sermon on the inevitable moral decrepitude of worldly authorities, debating all-the-while how they could get the clues they needed from the church.

(Player turnover has led to a huge loss of institutional knowledge. Every single question they wanted answered was something the group had already learned, but one of the players wasn't there at the time, and the other had forgotten all of it)

The debate turned away from acquiring clues from the church, and toward infiltrating the organization to get silver weapons for anti-vampire combat. They abandoned that idea pretty quickly because it would take a long time to advance through the church hierarchy and join its holy assassins, while buying the weapons from the Light Market would take a few minutes. They got in their van and drove back to Flowers, back through the portrait, back down into the Occultist lair, through the guest room and into the Light Market's new home.

The Light Market was a group of smugglers, which the players had heard a lot about but never encountered before. The Explorers had rescued them from a bad lease with the Hooker Slashers and Tattooed Vampires, paying with the lives of several good spelunkers. The Market was set up in the Occultists' Stronghold, using their spare room as a combination warehouse and bazaar. The players observed a group of smugglers arguing with some wizards over whether a set of paintings was suitable for their purposes. A merchant recognized them as potential customers and called them over to his stall. The players bought a silver knife, a silver kukri, and three hand grenades. They noted one of the smugglers arguing with a dungeon druid about how they were going to keep the product flowing, before returning to the coffee shop through the portal.

The players had never been to the Underworld Vault. They knew it was East of the cistern, but the only way they knew to get there was through the burned out gallery downtown. That was a short walk from the coffee shop. There weren't any cops watching the charred ruin, just some caution tape that they ducked under. The "zipper" covering the secret staircase was popped where the wall had peeled open.

Cassie descended first and made straight for the old fire cult hideout. Sax followed. A voice in the darkness told him not to move. He tossed his kukri, afraid of being gunned down by the guy holding a pistol on him. Cassie watched from the shadows. With her dark vision, she could see two more vampire gangsters with pistols, watching from the dark. Luckily for Sax, they didn't shoot him. Unfortunately, they wanted to recruit him. He was looking for work, right? They had a lot of use for a guy who knew how to kill people and break things. All he had to do was come with them.

(The players failed their attempt at a stealthy entrance, but got the best possible result on the reaction rolls table. The vampires immediately detected Sax, but didn't ambush and kill him either)

The three vampires took Sax through the door to the East, into the old gang stronghold. Cassie followed behind in the shadows, waiting for an opportune moment. The gang checkpoint was manned by a single vampiric hophead, deep in the throes of withdrawal. The undead gangsters berated him for his laxity, leaving only a single bloodsucker paying attention to Sax. He pushed the thug over and ran back the way he'd come, before they could get their guns on him. He tossed a grenade behind him for good measure, and ran back into the gallery basement. Cassie briefly debated holding the door against a vampiric counter-assault, but they both agreed that escaping into the fire cult's hideout was the smart play.

The fire cult sanctuary was abandoned. All the religious art and bonfires and plasma elementals were gone. It was cold and dark. Except a glowing light and the sound of grinding stone, coming from the melted room. A group of gigantic stone worms had burrowed through one of the walls into the chamber. They made a booming sound, like someone calling a dog. There were four of them, all Knights of the Lithic Courts. Microcline, Slade, Slate and Slab. They were looking for the magma children - creatures kept by the fire cult, entrusted to them the Lithic Courts. The players didn't know where the magma children were. They said the vampires probably took them. The Knights burrowed back into the earth, to investigate the undead mobsters and their alleged child-kidnapping behavior.

The abandoned ruins held little of interest. The players went straight through them, using the route they had mapped when they last visited the cistern.

(In the past, players have really struggled to retrace their steps through the dungeon. This time, the communal map really paid off)

The cistern was almost overflowing with fleshy "water". The sealed passage to the South was open. It stank like napalm and strong disinfectant. The players ignored the potentially dangerous passage and went straight for the vault.

The entrance had a bank of primitive ATMs, with ancient CRT screens displaying a green command line interface. A couple enforcers from the Megachurch were struggling to deposit a check. The next room was a block of offices, occupied by strange creatures: tall, soft bodied humanoids with four digits on each long limb, midnight black eyes and wide, toothy mouths. One of these life forms asked if the players wanted to open an account. They were here to see the showroom, one of the security guards opened the vault door.

The showroom had several objects on display. The players immediately gravitated toward a painting of an art gallery, which stretched infinitely across the painting until it was no longer visible. The showroom attendant eagerly invited them to "try it out" before buying. The players climbed through, into the gallery.