Unknown Armies Playtest - The Greggs and the Graveyard

Four Catholics in a borrowed Nissan Altima pulled into the parking lot of a combination Greggs/Burger King off the A11 in Cambridge, England.

• Sister Agia, Missionary of Charity and Parapsychologist Nun
• Dario "Johnny Boy" Ambrosio, Geriatric Wise Guy
• Father Romero, Jesuit Priest and Padre With a Shotgun
• Deacon Sur, Drunken Priest and Exorcist

They were from the Order and they were tracking illegal digging at Bronze Age sites across the UK. They knew the burial ground behind the Burger Greggs off the A11 roundabout at Fourwentways would be next. The back windows of a fast food restaurant, a Shell station and a Travelodge all looked out over the shallow domes of the fenced historic site. It was Autumn and almost midnight and everything was wet.

Dressed in civilian attire, Sister Agia went into the sausage shop and ordered a combo meal. She asked about disturbances at Bronze Age burial grounds and the wage slave working the register didn't know anything, but the guy working the grill shouted that there was a weird guy with a mask in the hotel. Agia covertly dumped the burger and struck up a conversation with a Punjabi trucker enjoying a cup of dubious coffee. He thought she was trying to buy drugs and angrily rebuffed her, directing her to the big rig parked illegally in the roundabout if she was interested in that shite.

 

Outside, Johnny Boy crept up to the truck in question and tapped on the window, waking up the trucker sleeping inside. He tried to communicate that he was interested in buying drugs, but the paranoid lorryman shut him down, refusing to open the door. He tried to deescalate the situation by flashing his gun and the trucker immediately drove off into the night. Deacon Sur went out into the graveyard to check if anyone had already burglarized the place. There was no sign of digging, only wrappers, cups and bottles carelessly discarded.

Father Romero and Sister Agia went into the Travelodge to see if they could find the mysterious masked figure. The lady at the front desk wouldn't tell them anything until the Father accidentally implied he was cruising for sex, then she gladly gave up the information. He knocked on the door, shotgun concealed under his jacket. A note came under the door, offering entry to one person and one person only. The Priest went inside. There was a set of fossilized dinosaur tracks propped on the dresser, two suitcases on the bed and a robed figure in a Misfits style skull mask. The mysterious merchant used a dry erase board to communicate, offering the Father a spread of artifacts. Silk shirts, knives, pistols, amulets... They didn't seem intimidated by Romero's shotgun.

Outside, the dead rose from the Bronze Age Cemetery. Deacon Sur watched from hiding as ancient skeletons and bog bodies clawed their way out of the earth. They wore bits of metal jewelry and carried the corroded remains of ancient weapons. The healthiest looking corpse was preserved like supple leather, blue tattoos still visible in the moonlight. He wore a gold circlet indicating kingship.

The masked merchant realized something was wrong. They looked out the window and saw

1. The dead rising in the cemetery
2. Johnny Boy waiting outside the window with a handgun.

They packed up their suitcases and left. Father Romero tried to stop them but they weren't having any of it. If the Priest wanted to play with corpses he could go upstairs and talk with the dicks in room 107. Johnny Boy tried to direct the zombies to attack the merchant but they flailed with their weapons, cutting him with their rusty blades. Incensed, he went out in front of the building and confronted the antiquities dealer. He made the mistake of reaching out to shove the robed figure, who pulled aside the cloth to reveal the dinosaur fossil, worn as a breastplate. Johnny Boy fell over paralyzed, mind cast down into a fossil bed and compressed beneath a million years of mud. Deacon Sur dragged the insensate mobster into the Travelodge, where the receptionist and maid were piling up furniture to stop zombies getting in through the glass doors.

One floor up, the Priest and the Nun knocked on the door of Room 107. The Nun was used to talking her way past the initial suspicion of criminals and establishing trust. She convinced the denizens they were in over their head and needed help. There were two grad students, one armed with a bronze age ax and one with an improvised macahuitl made from a cricket bat and sharpened pennies. The Padre asked them to explain and they showed him their thesis advisor. He lay decapitated in a bathtub full of ice, head and body still alive but unconscious. The Priest flew into a rage, cursing and firing his shotgun into the ceiling. He wanted to blow the sorcerers away but they had asked him for help, so he couldn't kill them.

Deacon Sur exorcised the spirit of the dinosaur fossil riding the insensate mobster, returning the old wise guy to consciousness. He briefly contemplated keeping the spirit around as a servant, but decided to banish it rather than risk possession. The pair followed the sound of the Priest's shotgun to room 107 and met up with the rest of the group, where the grad students explained the situation. The way it happened was, the professor found a ritual that would let him possess the body of a prehistoric British king buried in the cemetery. His mind was currently in the bog body with the tattoos and crown. What probably happened was, having his mind shunted into a decayed corpse from thousands of years ago triggered an immediate psychotic break. That's why he was acting like a brainless zombie leading other zombies in an assault on the hotel. 

Deacon Sur excitedly unsheathed the ritual sword he carried as an exorcism tool. If he could touch the King with it he could force the professor's mind out of it. Problem was, the King was in the middle of a pack of zombies coming up the stairs to the second floor after hacking the hotel workers to death. Father Romero reloaded his shotgun. Sister Agia flourished her nunchuks. Johnny Boy brandished his pistol and convinced the grad students to help, and that he wasn't just going to shoot the professor's severed head when their backs were turned. Together they tore through the slow moving zombie horde, peeling away monsters until the King was exposed. The Deacon feinted a decapitating blow then came up with a thrust under the chin, kabobing the skull. The real battle was spiritual, the alcoholic Priest bore down on the professor's dreaming mind and threw him out of the body. The zombie King flailed and tried to get one last hit in, but flung away his leaf bladed dagger with a wild uncontrolled motion. The zombies horde dropped to the ground, deanimated.

 

Sister Agia rushed back to the corpse in the tub. The severed head was awake and she quickly mated it to the body. The professor took in a big lungful of air, awake in his old body and glad the nightmare was over. He thanked the strangers for helping him and his students, he'd add them as coauthors when he published the results of his experiment. He didn't seem overly perturbed by the two people his ghouls murdered in the hotel lobby. His students were more concerned about their upcoming thesis defense.

But they had asked for help. They had had begged for His mercy and that stopped the Priest and the decrepit mobster from immediately raising their guns and blowing all three of them away.