Session one opened with the Bao Down truck selling dumplings at the Bread and Roses festival in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a Labor Day event commemorating the 1912 Textile Worker's Strike. The truck was doing great business, slinging delicious kosher dumplings at the edge of the live music venue. Cannon Song, the post-post punk made up of the New Maks crew, was playing a set. Rachel's unspeakable servant, Scooby the Shoggos Boy, was disguised in a dumpling based mascot costume with disturbingly dexterous hands. The monster was more than capable of running the food truck himself, freeing up the characters to wander around doing RPG character stuff without constantly being tethered to the steamer and the register.
Reba and Rachel got out of the truck and walked to the edge of the park where the festivities were set up. At the edge of the quad, a small crowd was gathered around an unmarked white van. The crew knew this was Forty Winks, a friendly Brethren of the Curb cabal who made their living with illegal alcohol sales. They were set up a deniable distance from the event, and doing a brisk trade - reselling malt liquor is profitable if you don't pay excise taxes on the transaction. The crowd of college students, teens pretending to be college students, and middle aged men didn't seem to mind being fleeced.
Tanya Summers, leader of the truck, introduced the rest of the gang to Reba, who was a personal friend of hers, and to Rachel, who looked like a square but was instantly identifiable as a Brother of the Curb thanks to the mystical identity they both shared. Tanya offered Reba a couple bottles of colt 45 for the truck, and Reba went to get her some dumplings in return. Rachel noticed that Corbin, the youngest member of the Forty Winks crew, was a telekinetic, when he stopped a dropped bottle from smashing on the street using only his mind. Corbin and Matt (the third member of the crew) weren't interested in selling Rachel their eyes, but had some other information to offer: a Mak Attax crew from India arrived in Salem recently, and were staying in a two million dollar cottage owned by the Brahman Occult Society. Rachel put the word out that she was working on a ritual involving human eyeballs and animal corpses. Corbin surprised Rachel by knowing exactly what she was talking about, and telling her he didn't want to hear anything more about it. The Forty Winks crew clearly knew a lot more about magick shit than they let on, considering none of them were even full casters.
Back at the festival, Cannon Song finished their set. DBD was due on stage, but he was too nervous to go up without chemical assistance. He ducked into a portajohn, inhaled one of Reba's blunts, and was about to wash it down with a bottle of hot sauce purchased from a nearby Dominican market, when he was interrupted by a gremlin with the face of William Shatner. The gremlin, name of Jim, offered DBD a mysterious package, which he had been told contained "the good shit" by a mysterious benefactor. Inside was a little pepper, so squat and flat it looked like a peyote button. DBD put the hot sauce back in his pocket and scarfed the chili. It blasted his mouth, throat and sinuses, but also upped his adept score by one point, as he saw a brief flash of light in his nonexistent third eye. It was agony, but he managed to keep it together... Sort of. The gremlin warned him to duck after he finished singing, then ran away before Tal could get a good look at it.
DBD went up on stage with his guitar, and began to sing his self-written version of John Lennon's Imagine, in honor of his friend Tal.
imagine there's no gender
we all share a human soul
no cocks or pudenda
between our legs, just a…
we all share a human soul
no cocks or pudenda
between our legs, just a…
He vomited on stage. Choked a little, but then kept singing. It was difficult for Tal to watch. It was difficult for everyone to watch. Nobody threw a bottle at the stage or anything, it was more uncomfortable than just straight up bad. At the end, Tal forgot the gremlin's advice, and was thrown off the stage in mid stage-dive by the blast wave from the KFC a couple blocks away exploding.
DBD wasn't badly hurt by the fall. Reba got the truck read to leave in a hurry, while the rest of the cabal got their act together and ran toward the blast site. The KFC was burning, the windows shattered and one of the doors thrown clear. There were a couple cars in the parking lot, but according to one of the bystanders, the store looked like it was empty when it exploded. Rachel used her merchant powers to buy his memory of the event off him. The guy was going to the drug store to get some heartburn pills. Then the KFC exploded, like a boiler explosion from an old train. Rachel compared the man's memory of the exploding restaurant to a kirlian camera photo she'd seen on CHEAPMEAT.UZ of a magickally boosted KFC explosion. They were nothing alike, the Lawrence KFC explosion probably had a mundane cause.
Tal was bothered by how Rachel bought a memory from a person who didn't understand magick, and couldn't have known he would literally lose his recollection of the event in the exchange. Rachel insisted that her Merchant powers wouldn't have allowed the transaction to take place if the guy wasn't ready to give the memory up.
The group heard sirens approaching. Reba rounded up the cabal and got everyone in the truck. Except DBD, who had noticed a bystander injured by flying glass from the blast. He yanked the glass shard out and poured hot sauce on the wound, using his adept school's healing powers to repair the damage. Tal was helping the guy to his feet when a police car pulled up along with the firefighters. There was some kind of localized rainstorm that followed the cop as he got out of the car, wearing his rain poncho. He was pissed about the destruction of the KFC, but thankfully didn't pick DBD out of the crowd as an obvious suspect. The capsaicinaturge was able to sneak back to the idling truck and, thanks to Reba's quick packing up, drive away at a brisk but nonsuspicious pace.
On the road back to Salem, the team debated who was behind the attack. Rachel thought it was a mundane attack with an occult coverup - the rain cloud around the police officer. She suspected Mak Attax India and the Brahman Occult Society. David Ben David told the rest of the group about the gremlin encounter, and about the origin of his magick powers at a McDonalds in India. The group suspected that the special pepper he ate before going on stage was connected to this.
DBD felt that he should call Officer Walker (the cop followed by the rain cloud) to warn him that the gremlin was behind the destruction of the KFC. He did so, but his inarticulate rambling was not able to convince the police officer. The cop did angrily demand that DBD explain everything he knew about the mysterious rain cloud following him, but DBD hung up rather than elaborate.
Rachel decided to arrange a meeting with the police officer. It took a couple phone calls to get through to him, but she offered information about the destruction of the KFC, and the mysterious unnatural phenomena following him around. Walker agreed to a meet the following day at 1:00 PM, in a restaurant off Lappin Park. That gave the group time to prepare, and do other investigatory stuff before the meeting.
Back in Salem, DBD visited the park. He couldn't find a good spot to set up that would observe the restaurant's outdoor seating, but he identified a nearby rooftop that would serve the same purpose, though leave him a little exposed. The plan was, he and Scooby the Shoggos Boy would provide overwatch from the roof while Rachel met up with the cop. From there, they could use their magick to provide cover fire if a fight broke out and Rachel needed to get away.
With the site reconnoitered, the team split up to do some information gathering.
Reba tried to put the word out among the Brethren that she wanted to meet with the other trucks in the area. The Forty Winks crew had gone to ground and they couldn't find them, but Courier Yancy Smoke showed up on his motorcycle to parlay with them. The fast talking Messenger warned Reba that the Bao Down crew were widely believed to be responsible for the destruction of the KFC, since they had a "pyromancer" in their crew. He agreed to get the other crews together to hear what Reba had to say.
That night, Tal went back to Lawrence to get information from other crustpunks and various lowlifes. They found a rave at an abandoned public pool. They brought some dumplings to hand out, which proved popular with the pair of weirdos outside the venue. The greasy weirdos recognized Tal as one of their own, and welcomed them to the event. Tal got some information from them: people blamed the destruction of the KFC on a "firemancer" associated with the Bao Down food truck. The younger of the pair, a teenaged and probably genuinely homeless kid, mentioned he had seen a trio of weirdos carrying a bunch of equipment go into the mechanical room in the back of the pool. One of them, a lady in a red ascot, was real pretty, but he only saw her for a couple seconds. With that information in hand, Tal entered the abandoned building.
The lobby was trashed, all the copper wire torn out. The locker rooms were a bit busier, with people shooting up, having sex, or doing other mysterious activities in the shower and toilet stalls. The pool room itself had a sound system set up, with the pool itself drained and serving as an improvised mosh pit.
Like this, but at night, and with people in it
Tal circulated among the ravers to gather information. The thrashers hit them up for some X, but Tal wasn't holding. They learned that the KFC was closed for Labor Day when it exploded, but that a few days before that, corporate had transferred a bunch of new employees in to replace the old crew. No explanation as to why.
Tal went to the back of the pool room, where a fat man was fussing over the electrical hookup. The man's mouth was just a tiny bit too wide for his face. The effect went away when he started talking, upset by the large number of plugs going into the single pirate electrical hookup. Tal agreed that the situation was fucked, and went into the maintenance room to see if they could find the trio of weirdos mentioned by the crustpunks outside. The backroom smelled like chlorine, and there was a spiral staircase leading down that clearly didn't belong. Tal could hear the sound of gently sloshing water coming from below, and there was a light source down there, illuminating a water filled tunnel made of tiles.
Tal wasn't dumb enough to explore the secret pool tunnel themself. They phoned Reba, who gathered the squad and drove the truck down to Lawrence and the abandoned pool. Rachel dressed Scooby the Unspeakable Servant up in a zentai bodysuit, which looked weird but disguised the creature's true form from the ravers. She also purchased a bottle of water filled with ecstacy, which the ravers had mixed but not tapped yet. DBD tried to pick up some ketamine, but failed to find a willing supplier. He acted so strange that the ravers assumed it had to be an act, and he was some kind of narc.
The cabal gathered in the backroom, at the top of the staircase. They could hear faint conversation coming from below, like an argument. They descended the spiral steps into the pool tunnels, in time to hear the sound of a boat motor receding into the dark tunnels beyond.
Rachel instructed Scooby to kill the boat's engine, using the unspeakable servant's ability to generate unnatural phenomena. It was a difficult shot, but the Shoggos Boy pulled it off with aplomb. There was a sound from the tunnel like a catastrophic battery failure, then the sound of argument as the motor died. The cabal sloshed down the tunnel toward the mystery. The boaters turned off their flashlight when they heard the cabal coming, leaving the tunnel dark. Ever prepared for unusual military encounters, David Ben David pulled on his NVGs, illuminating the small amount of visible light from the strange light source in the tunnel junction behind him. In front of him, he saw three strangers: a woman with a scarf or ascot, holding a Tokarev handgun at a low ready, a tall shirtless man with tattoos and a Death Grips type of aesthetic, and a portly ex-military type in a load bearing vest, pulling an inflatable boat behind him. They were obviously uncertain and ready for a fight with whoever was closing on them in the darkness.
DBD used his chili based magick to cast Too Spicy For Me, reducing the gun wielding urban explorer's interest in imminent combat. Rachel called out to the group, and they engaged the cabal in conversation. They were urban explorers, here to adventure in the mysterious tunnels somehow still filled with crystal clear, chlorinated water. The lady with the handgun and red scarf was Nadia, the shirtless man was Orlock, and the military guy was Mick. Rachel noticed that Orlock had a dowsing pendulum on his belt loop, which he claimed was just a good luck charm when questioned. The explorers accepted the team's help dragging the boat back to the staircase. The cabal questioned them about their knowledge of strange gremlins, which the explorers denied at first. They pretended to be normies unaware of the existence of magick, but eventually admitted that the gremlin was the one who told them about the pool tunnels, and also said something about a "moon ladder". The cabal told the explorers that they worked at the Bao Down food truck. Rachel asked if she could tag along on future exploration of the pool tunnels, but Nadia didn't feel comfortable taking a new explorer into an area she hadn't mapped herself. Undeterred, Rachel offered the assistance of Scooby in the explorers' further expeditions, advertising her "friend"'s magick abilities. The two teams exchanged contact info, in case they had reason to communicate in the future. Then they both left.
The next day, prior to the meet with the cop, Rachel paid a visit to her friends at the Brahman Occult Society. The society's headquarters were just a couple blocks away from the Salem State University campus, in the unassuming facade of the old Anglo-American Club. Rachel knew the secret knock that got Salisbury the Butler to answer the door, and he invited her and her "manservant" Scooby inside. At the top of the uncomfortably steep interior stairway, Rachel had to sidle aside to make room for a leather jacketed, gimp masked, heavily bearded man on his way out. She noted that the back of his jacket was covered in patches with Latin, Arabic and Sanskrit script. Salisbury ushered her into the antechamber, decorated with the society's legendary "clockwork samsara", a big set of rotating wheels covered in occult illustrations, with a blinking eye in the center that displayed a rotating gallery of symbols each time it blinked. Rachel recalled that this was some kind of security system.
Like this, but tackier
Rachel was met in the lounge beyond by Otis, a scion of one of Boston's founding families, who could occasionally be found mingling with the commoners at the local HEMA gym, practicing his talwar and dal technique. He was delighted to see fellow patrician Rachel, as always. Winthrop was missing, as usual, but Coffin was available, as always, should Rachel be interested in conversing with the old monster. She was not interested in conversing with the old monster. She had met Coffin before, a grossly fat man who somehow subsisted without eating, drinking, excreting, or ever leaving his room in the Society's clubhouse. The big man had discovered some "perfect body" technique of the type employed by assorted sadhus, bodhisattvas and fakirs.
Otis shared a rumor that Rachel's food truck was responsible for the incineration of the KFC. Rachel denied everything. She believed a strange gremlin named Jim was involved. Otis hadn't heard anything about this creature, but he suspected that the turbo hot pepper he gave DBD originated with a cabal of Indian occultists the BOS was currently boarding at one of their properties. He was happy to introduce Rachel to the gentlemen and hijra, if she was interested. Besides that, Otis had also heard that "the Irishwoman" (Ethel "Granny Ethel" O'Mara) was in talks with a strange out-of-towner to sabotage the BOS club's occult defenses. He wasn't worried, though. Probably just a cry for attention.
Rachel asked if the club had any occult items they were interested in selling. Otis offered the Veil of Hakim the Dyer. He related the story of the masked prophet, who led a rebellion against the Abbasid Caliphate but was eventually slain by his own bodyguards when he inadvertently revealed that his veil concealed a bad case of leprosy rather than supernatural beauty. The veil gave anyone who attacked the wearer a malus to-hit, but also infected the wearer with leprosy. Rachel used her merchant powers to buy it in exchange for three years of her lifespan, paid to Otis.
After buying the magick item, Rachel left the club and sat down with Tal, who had expressed serious misgivings about her merchant powers. Tal was worried that Rachel was buying things from people who didn't know magick was real, and couldn't realistically consent to selling things like memories or years of their life. Rachel countered that her powers literally could not work if the person she was trading with was not certain that they wanted to sell the things she bought from them. As a gesture of good faith, Rachel used her merchant ability to move some of the group's identity points around, giving, Tal and others the opportunity to train up their identity scores to a higher level.
Next session, the cabal wants to:
- MEET UP WITH OFFICER WALKER
- FIND SOMEONE TO SELL RACHEL EYEBALLS
- EXPLORE THE POOL ROOMS
- CONVENE A MEETING OF FOOD TRUCKS
- TRICK THE CAVE EXPLORERS INTO HIRING SCOOBY THE SHOGGOS BOY
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